Okay, that’s not true. We knew him quite well, or at least the obnoxious persona he projected online. Alas, he has resigned as moderator at Uncommon Descent. We can only hope that he’ll do the same thing he did last time he resigned, which is go somewhere else and start throwing profanity-laced tirades at Denyse O’Leary. But I doubt it, since he’s apparently going to stay there and post occasionally. I enjoyed this comment from a UD reader though:

In my opinion, you are an extremely intelligent human being. Unfortunately, you suffer from some sort of psychosis.

This one made me do a spit take:

Dave Scot is one of the most scientifically literate commentators on the internet–period.

Wow. That’s the equivalent of someone saying, “Paris Hilton is one of the most humble, classy and intelligent women in the entire world.” But if you want the real reason why he left, you have to turn to DaveScot himself, who left a comment saying that he won’t moderate the site anymore because Barry won’t let him do the things he’s done in the past:

This was essentially a decision on my part that it would take up too much of my time to continue effective moderation of the site under relaxed rules.

The “crisis” I warned about by mimicing Joe Biden’s infamous “test the mettle of the new guy” gaffe was anticipation of a rush by gratuitous religion bashers and design deniers to see what disruption and inflammatory comments they could get away with. Keeping the current polite dialog going in such an environment is more work than I’m prepared to take on. Under the previous rules it was only taking a few minutes of targeted intervention each day. That’s solely, IMO, a result of the ruthless moderation policy established by Bill Dembski in the first months of UD and carried on by me in the subsequent few years with his almost constant approval, support, and trust in my judgement.

By “ruthless” he means absurd and intellectually dishonest. We’ve seen time and time again something utterly stupid get posted to UD, then disappear down the memory hole when it proves to be embarrassing. I have no problem with being ruthless about banning people; I do it too. It’s my blog and if you annoy me, I have every right to throw you out on your ass. But if you write something that turns out to be false or embarrassing, you own up to it and learn from it. Making it disappear only shows how insecure you are.